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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Jean-Claude Van Damme And Amazon Are Doing A Crazy-Ass Action Comedy Series

I have a deep, undying love for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but
even I can admit that many of his most recent DTV action endeavors are not all
that great (I have hope for Kickboxer: Vengeance though). His best role of the last few years was as a version of himself in
the fantastic and underrated Belgian crime flick JCVD, and
he’s going to play an offshoot of himself again in a bonkers sounding series.
Needless to say, I’m all in.

According to the folks over at Slashfilm, Jean-Claude Van Damme is teaming with Amazon for an action comedy series called
Jean-Claude Van Johnson. Yes, you read that correctly. And
the description is just as head-scratching as the title:

Jean-Claude Van Damme comes out of retirement to put on once
again the mantle of his alter ego, undercover private contractor Jean-Claude
Johnson. “Johnson’s” cover as the lead role in a re-imagined action film
version of “Huckleberry Finn” lands him right back in the midst of the danger
he secretly always craves—but most importantly, back in the orbit of Vanessa,
his fellow operative and the woman he loves.

Within the series, Jean-Claude Van Damme is actually the
alter ego that the hero puts on when, you know, he needs to be heroic. The
series even uses some of the Muscles from Brussels’ more questionable movies,
like Double Team and Street Fighter,
which were just covers for Van Johnson’s missions. But now he’s far removed
from his glory days—for instance, he can no longer do the splits to avoid
incoming blows—things weigh heavy on him, and cards from Dolph Lundgren put him
into a depression spiral.

As if all of this isn’t enough, and it’s totally more than
enough for me, there’s a weird level of talent involved elsewhere that makes
this even more impressive. David Schwimmer, yes, that David
Schwimmer, is said to be Van Johnson’s primary rival, a fellow agent with the
same mysterious organization. Sir Ridley Scott is even executive producing
(!?!), Key & Peele director Peter Atencio (who also
directed Keanu) will helm the series, and The
Expendables writer David Callaham wrote what is being called a
hilarious script.

Jean-Claude Van Johnson only has a pilot
order at Amazon, but I really, really need this to become a full-blown series.
Until now I didn’t even know how much this was missing from my life.